I only know how to access the levels because I watched your videos
the games needs some sound effects, any sound effects
there is a bug in the last level (the one with the "Thanks for playing" text) when I am holding the ctrl key (the bug can be seen in the image present in this comment)
some of the puzzles took me some time to figure out not because they are hard but because the solution was hard to notice for example the solution for the final level where you have to use the magnet door to block the minus block from going up that solution felt unprofessional and not obvious for the player
Type: I am neither a platformer or puzzle game player.
Completion time: 20~ minutes.
N.B.: anything I don't mention just worked, the entire rest of the tutorial made sense, the levels not listed in the level feedback section just made sense and worked I think as you intended. From your brain to mine. I did have to stop and think a couple of times to work out the order of operations.
+ Look & Feel
I like the magnet transition.
Initial wipe effect remains on left side of screen.
There are a number of assets that are at an incorrect depth compared to the action sprites, i.e. magnets go behind things it should be in front of.
The game has a unified look and feel with the exception of the Mario pipes, I think they are a solid shorthand for "stuff goes in here", but should probably be replaced eventually with something that suits the theme and the world. It does seem to a portal-esque testing space with industrial touches?
+ Levels
Tutorial
I could not immediately identify how to exit the tutorial level, I first went to the grated doorway and pressed Up to enter but nothing happened, then I tried jumping into the magnet mist while holding the magnet and swapped the polarity to see if that helped. Because it looks like a Mario tube, I assumed I had to get myself into it.
Zone Selector
I feel you should start in the zone selection area with the magnet already in hand.
The magnet cannot reach the blue magnet wave for the 06 pipe from the main floor of the zone selection stage, you have to go onto the step.
Level 3
I hopped over the drill bit because it looks dangerous.
Level 5
This puzzle was very enjoyable until the final step, when I felt frustrated I had been tricked by the final polarizing of the magnet, and had to repeat the level
Level 6
When the large blue magnet box was in the up position, I expected to be able to fit below it.
I did not expect the L door to stop the block as it seems to swing very freely and without weight, I expected it to be pushed out of the way so that solution did not occur to me for some time.
I thought the solution was to use the magnet to block the blue magnet box when it falls, as the magnet is taller than the height of the button in the pit.
When I grew frustrated I just started flipping the switch and mashing F and arrived at the solution by accident.
I accidentally pressed CTRL many times during level 6, I kept thinking it was the aim button.
I spent 30-40% of my playtime on level 06.
+ Controls/Characters
Magnet
I felt there was a bug in the game where the firing direction of the magnet remains in a previously fired direction despite the character changing facing and moving around, this was not the case.
Quick experimentation showed that pressing E to release the magnet without aiming releases it in the direction of the mouse pointer, not in the direction the character is travelling, this may be confusing to some users.
I had my mouse pointer outside the game area most of play.
If the cursor was represented with an in-game asset or indicated by an effect of some kind (like a very small pulse from the magnet towards the cursor) it might keep in the player's mind that the magnet is attracted to the cursor and not "thrown" by the moving character. The default windows cursor felt like it was "outside" the game.
There does appear to be momentum added to the magnet if it is released while moving (longer moving E throw than standing E throw), and the aiming animation has the character holding it over their back, so it does feel like the character is throwing it.
I would just like to fling the magnet, there never seemed to be a need for fine Scorched Earth aiming arc except to throw it up into the level selector tubes.
The magnet is effectively cheery, it is cute and I like it.
Are we not sure the magnet is the hero of the story? The magnet looks more marketable and seems more unique than the PC, plus the large eyes and emoji expression would do well on all sizes of merch whereas the black on green tends to shrink the PC's face. It might be fun if the magnet has a different expression for positive and negative polarities, smiling, and grumpy? Means you can sell 2 plushes in a pack instead of one, make stickers for each magnet and then another with the two of them, etc. I like the idea that the magnet is going on a journey and has asked the Wheelie TV for help.
I didn't realize the magnet had a joyful expression until testing at the end, does it only go off when thrown above a 45 degree angle? Or when aimed and thrown over 45?
Why is the magnet otherwise upset/unhappy when it is thrown? PC always remains smiling but the magnet does not seem to enjoy it.
Player Character (PC)
I am not sure there is a need for both a half-jump and the full jump, I had a few situations where I was jumping without pressing the space bar for long enough, resulting in the character jumping at a section of wall a couple of times instead of on top of it.
PC has a good boing to his full hop. The animation is nice.
The character stops and starts as expected, I am sure it could feel snappier but it is absolutely fine as is.
The overall experience is great ! But the aiming is really clunky especially on d-pad. It makes using the magnet much harder than it could be. The on-off switches have a bit of a weird hitbox and are a bit clunky to use. The UI doesn't make clear how long you need to press the restart button to restart. The levels being aligned make going from a place of the hub to another really slow and it would be interesting to see how a hub more similar to something like Kirby nightmare in dreamland would work for this game.
I suppose it won't be the case in later levels, but most of the puzzles in this demo felt like they solved themselves. The final level does a really good job however at subverting expectations. I feel like a lot of levels don't make full use of the different mechanics potential (once again, this will probably be fixed in the final game).
If you´re going to controller settings and trying to change a button but don´t actually have a controller around you can´t exit the menu anymore. I tried it at least to exit but couldn´t find a way to do that.
Of course this is a personal preference, but I think being able to move while throwing the magnet will allow for some solutions that require more timing and prevent the game from getting stale quicker. My favorite moment was in the last level where I threw the magnet into the pit in midair and it would be cool to have more of those. Great game otherwise though.
Feels nice, I personally find the magnet switch polarity cooldown a bit long, so I'd personally at least be able to shorten or remove it, minor issue, but it is what I felt
The character felt nice to control, the magnet felt nice to throw (although the half-second between holding E and having the character actually prep themself to throw took some getting used to), and the puzzles were well-designed. I have to say, though, being unable to move while aiming feels a bit off. I had more than one instance where I ended up in the wrong place and couldn't aim properly, and lack of movement made it so I had to throw the magnet at the floor and hope it didn't fall off an edge.
I don't know if this was your doing or if something broke, but I had zero sound during my entire playthrough. I checked my volume mixer and everything and still, total silence. (Using the Windows build, if that helps debug).
When the game started up, the window ended up so large that the bottom and right sides were cut off. I recognize this as something that might get fixed, though, if you add resolution settings to the system preferences menu, and playing in fullscreen had no issues.
The very last puzzle is funny. It took some thinking, trying several things, and gave me that "a-ha!" moment you wanted to achieve, for sure. It's just that I'm not even sure if my solution is the right one. I threw the magnet from the top level under the big minus block while it was being pulled up and next to the button that drops the weight, such that the magnet held up the block just above the button and stopped the button from being pressed. That's a clever solution, it's just that between the tiny gap I had to get the magnet in and the chance that the magnet could just end up on the button, forcing a restart, makes me think I found an alternate solution. Just felt that was worth pointing out.
I also think it might be a good idea to introduce the semisolid platforms before the first hub puzzle. I kinda got myself stuck trying to jump up to chase the magnet after it landed on not a slope, and was confused for a second.
Minus the potential sound issues, I luckily didn't run into any glitches. Then again, I wasn't trying anything super out-there, so I wasn't properly glitch-hunting. Still, though, intended player experience was super clean!
Overall, fun time! Can't wait to see where else this goes.
-- Epsilon
(Edit: forgot my "lack of movement while aiming" point)
To be fair, I felt the aiming / throwing mechanic a little jerky / not as smooth as I'd expect. An interesting option (maybe as an accessibility feature) would be to, instead of pushing the stick forward / toward where you aim, pulling it backward as you'd pull back a bow to aim before releasing the arrow.
1: There should be controls for aiming that don't require moving my right hand away from the arrow keys over to the mouse.
2: Levels should be numbered so as to make it easy to google hints for or just to discuss.
3: Clearer delineation between green power cable in OFF and ON mode. As it is, I can only be sure it's ON if I have an OFF cable to compare the brightness to or I follow the cable to the button or switch. Maybe an animation while ON?
4: 90 degree magnet gates shouldn't fill with color inward after turning, they should fill with color from top to bottom, as if gravity is pulling the magnetism into the lower one, to clearly communicate that it's the lower one that's active. Maybe even drain the color from the other pole in tandem.
5: Too much aliasing. Graphics seem not to be aligned to game resolution. 2 pixel wide lines sometimes appear 1 pixel wide, sometimes the inverse case, depending on where in the resolution grid they fall. Playing on 3440x1440 in windowed as that's how the game started, fullscreen seems bilinearly upscaled from windowed resolution so doesn't change the issue.
6: Pause menu options seem inconsistent. Sometimes require a double press. Playing at 100 hz
I'm mainly posting here because I have found 3 different solutions for the last level (SPOILERS ahead) and I am not sure they are all intended:
1) Throwing the magnet onto the switch (by switching polarity mid-air) and jumping above the pit before the [-] platform comes up 2) Throwing the magnet next to the bottom switch so that the blocks doesn't go all the way down and doesn't close the way to the key
3) Using the door to prevent the block from going back up (which I guess is the intended solution)
Also I wanted to say that these videos are fantastic, great work ! The game has definitively improved since last time and it feels really good to play now.
I did the second solution, but it didn't feel like the right answer because of the weird physics of throwing the magnet under the block. I don't think I would have thought of the third solution.
Played, had a lot of fun! Very unique concept, and the puzzles are made very well! One thing I noticed is that the magnet free aim mode doesn't detect if there are any blocks in the way, such as in the final level. Aside from that, this was a blast!
I didn't play through a lot of the demo because I found the controls a bit counter intuitive. I didn't realize that you had to aim the magnet with the mouse until I remembered seeing that in you video. I also found myself reaching towards the mouse every time I had to aim the back to the keyboard as I am right handed and used the arrow keys to move. Also I'm used to having the up arrow and w buttons in addition to the space bar preform jumps so it took a bit of getting used to using the space bar exclusively. The placement of the buttons for polarity switch and the magnet pick were easy to mix up. I often found myself switching polarity when I wanted to pick up the magnet. I know there was an options menu to remap the controls but I didn't feel like doing that for a game that made me frustrated within the first minute of the tutorial. Aside from the button mix up the robot felt very good to control and the premise seems fun. I can't wait to see this concept refined.
Based on another player's comment, I don't think I used the intended solution to beat the last puzzle. I threw the magnet down in the pit preventing the large blue block from being able to push the button when dropped.
Might also help to have the levels numbered so you could refer to them without describing them.
Also, as others have said, for the finished product it would be great to avoid situations where you can easily get soft locked and forced to reset the level.
I had fun. Movement in this version feels very smooth and responsive and the jump has just the right arc. Personally, I tend to struggle with some puzzle games and I found all of these very straightforward. I hesitate to call the game easy because I still struggled with Puzzle #6. I put the level into an unsolvable state a few different ways and at one point fell into that pit with the button in it and then couldn't escape. Oh, and for some reason, pressing the left bumper reset the level one time, but then wouldn't do it again the next time I pressed it.
Last bits of feedback, the controller doesn't work in the options menu, I had to briefly switch back to my mouse, and the game froze briefly on the tutorial as I was interacting with that first magnet door.
With all that though, I think the game is making amazing progress, and I would love to play more of this in the future!
Congratulations on the project, it's a lot of fun, the controls are very responsive (I played using the controller) and the game is giving a lot of feedback, the art is also very beautiful, the puzzles were very well built and executed, just keep it that way, even thougha demo, your game is already a success
Hello, Mark. Thank you for your YouTube series. As a fellow game developer, it's great to watch. I have some thoughts, but they are subjective, so please take this with a grain of salt:
While the gameplay is good, the character controller is well done (acceleration, deceleration, jump, etc), the mechanics are easy to comprehend, the level design is so-so (easy wins should be peppered throughout to give a sense of achievement and flow, i.e. introduce mechanic, next level is easy, then medium, then hard), the game itself is... not fun.
I think to myself, "why am I playing this?". When I play Untitled Magnet Game, I feel like I'm playing a game that's just created for the sake of making a game. The title could just be "Video Game". I don't see the joy in the creativity here. There is loads of creativity, just no joy in it. Perhaps this is done intentionally to just make an MVP, but I feel that joy still make it into an MVP. Joy can be communicated through:
Story (which can give players a reason to finish)
Environment art
Player artwork
Gameplay elements (is there humor to be found in your mechanics?)
Are you having fun making this game? Does it make you smile or chuckle to yourself when you make it? I ask this because it seems like a game someone was obligated to make. Some games are dark, brooding, and serious... but your game here feels like it should have whimsy. There is a whimsical aspect to the character and idea, but there's no whimsy or joy in the gameplay.
Even so, it's still pretty solid as a "video game", it's just not fun to play.
I mean doesn't need to be particularly big. Portal 1 and 2 have very simple stories (barely for the first) but it still makes the game engaging, funny, surprising, etc etc. There's an additional level of engagement. Doesn't have to be super deep you know?
Great stuff! The movement felt smooth and the mechanics are self-explanatory (also nice tutorial! Learn by doing).
Personally, I'm not a fan of 'softlocking' a level, even though there is a reset button it sometimes made me feel there is just a few set-in-stone steps I need to take. Which in essence is true of course... it just feels more like cracking a code (moon-logic in point-and-clicks) than solving a puzzle. Being able to trigger magnet gates without a magnet, or have a path around it, would probably help negate this feeling.
A small bug I found is that in the HUB world, the level reset sprite grows infinitely when holding Ctrl. Easy to fix with e.g. a Mathf.Clamp() on the Sprite transform.localScale, or block the action when in the HUB world.
It took me a couple minutes to realize that I needed to press the bumpers to get through the the options menu with a controller. Also when you go to aim the magnet your character slightly moves as you change angle of your throw which made me fall off of platforms a couple times. I like the single screen puzzles. The puzzles were really fun, the seventh one had me scratching my head for a few minutes.
I liked this a lot better than the initial demo. Solid puzzles, not too difficult, but still satisfying. I personally had no problem understanding mechanics so I could focus on the puzzle solving without being confused.
Just a couple small critiques. I often ended up in a position where I need to reset the level, which I don't think feels super good to be forced to do. Also, the hub - the walk to each level becomes a bit too long, especially later on.
I liked this demo! It feels like you've got a really solid grasp on what you want the game to be, and the puzzles were all excellent.
One minor complaint, regarding the restart system: by default, the control key restarts the level, though 99% of puzzle games (that I play, anyway) map this to the R key. I suppose this could be a problem if the player accidentally presses R, since it's so close to the other keys, but I think it wouldn't be such a big deal if you put up a "Are you sure you want to restart?" screen where the player could cancel the restart. Baba Is You did a similar thing with its restarts, and I think it worked really well.
Anyways, I think you're on the right track, and I'm legitimately excited for where you take this game next!
Overall I enjoyed the game. The game controls well even with a keyboard and mouse. I found the puzzles enjoyable and I was able to complete all the puzzles (aside from the last room) with little frustration. One suggestion I have is to make the hub more interesting. Maybe you could add some platforms or simple puzzles? Also for some reason I kept forgetting to grab the magnet in the hub so I have to go back and get it.
The movement in the V2.0 version of the game feels super good and is super fun to move around, even though you can only jump and change the magnet polarization. The only thing that I didn't like about the controllers is that when you aim to throw the magnet, you can't move around to perfecty aim the way you want, and having to keep pressing the same button to throwing feels odd to me, but maybe is my case because I don't usually play puzzle games. I would put the aim button just one button, the R1 for the PS controllers or the RB for the Xbox controllers.
Some jumps can be a bit tight for a puzzle game, if it were a platform game, it would be fine.
Ending the level just at getting the key, feels odd when you have to enter a room where the key is and it exits the moment you get the key and I feel like this game can benefit from the idea of getting the magnet to get out of the level, but that's up to the developer.
While holding the magnet it's possible to kind of get stuck on a ledge. Holding ctrl (reset) in the hub area is fun. And finally I felt the need for a "Exit" button or just "X" out of the options menu, because the first thing I did in the demo was get stuck in there lol.
I think a separate back button for the controls and the pause menu is definitely needed. Having to press esc in the options menu unpauses the game automatically, which can get annoying.
In addition to that, in my opinion, a "back to main menu" button is missing from the pause button.
2. Controls
Not much to say here, felt great overall after remapping the jump to the W key.
However, when throwing using the mouse, I found it counterintuitive to drag forwards to throw. I think from playing games like Worms and Angry Birds it is engrained in my hands to pull back to throw forwards. While I don't think everyone agrees with me in this regard, an option to toggle between those two would be nice.
3. Gameplay
Once again, good overall, though I do have a few points to consider.
For one, in some levels (or level, I only noticed at the last level) it is annoying that the magnet spawns behind the character. As it took me a while to figure it out, having to run back after each reset made it quite annoying, with me often leaving the magnet behind and having to backtrack again.
Another thing I've noticed is that there is a slight cooldown when changing the polarity, meaning you can't rapidly change it. While it probably makes more sense balancing wise, it would be nice to be able to change the polarities more quickly, without having to wait for the animation to finish.
My last point is to maybe have a dedicated place to give feedback so that it isn't spread out between different platforms. Maybe even putting a link to where you can give feedback in the main menu so that it's easier to give feedback directly after playing.
I really like how the game is coming along. Keep up the good stuff!
THIRD PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILER FOR ONE OF THE PUZZLES
The puzzle mechanics are very inventive, well-designed and fun to use, once you've figured them out. Because the mechanics are so novel you do have to fight your intuition quite a bit, which is pretty tiring if the game were longer.
The game was a lot of fun to play though. Once you're used to the rules of the game world it's just a joy to figure out the quite challenging puzzles! The introduction of new mechanics is also paced well, although the tutorial could be more thorough in showing the player how the character and the magnet interact with al the basic elements in the game world.
A particular example of this: The second puzzle is not very satisfying to solve as I did not know that the magnet falls through the thin platform instead of landing on top of it.
Definitely going to keep an eye on the development progress. Great work so far Mark! :)
Great demo, I enjoyed the puzzles and didn't have any gripes, but one very veeerrrryyyy minor thing I noticed is that in the hub, the magnet trajectory went behind the doors. Obviously, this is something super small, but, although it may have been intentional, I don't imagine it would, so just wanted to let you know. Other than that, again, great demo, I can't wait for more!
Movement feels loads better, and making switching polarity a main mechanic makes the game feel much more magnet-y.
My main criticism is that I really dislike the level automatically ending when you collect a key; it feels like it's taking control away from the player, and training myself to not assume I'll need to find a way out once I've got the key is difficult. It feels strange to knowingly throw the player character into a pit I know it can't get out of just to pick up a key.
There's also a few things that don't work the way I expect them to be looking at them/interacting with them. Throwing the magnet into the pipes is fairly clear what to do but feels disconnected from the rest of the mechanics; perhaps it would be better if pipes are only there to produce magnets and you could throw the magnet onto a switch to open doors or something? Using a mechanic that already exists in the puzzles. Then it felt strange to me that the magnet could fall through certain platforms that the player character can't; I assumed they were solid because the robot stood on them, so didn't think of trying to let the magnet fall through.
Then a few quality of life things could be better; a less tedious hub, puzzles that require less hard resetting, etc.
All in all a really good demo with nice puzzles and a massive step up in terms of it being fun to play.
some of the jumps are a little to tight for a puzzle game. The movement fells alot better.
i feel the exits are not that obvius. I restarted the tutorial level multipule times until i figured out how i was suposed to leave the level.
I found some places that it was posible to get softlocked, i know there is a restart button but it feels kinda bad when you just figured it out just to have to do it all over again.
The hubworld is a good idea. it is kinda bad how you spawn in on the left and all the levels are more and more to the right.
A few minor things but all in all a really good demo.
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I got the same bug
some of the puzzles took me some time to figure out not because they are hard but because the solution was hard to notice for example the solution for the final level where you have to use the magnet door to block the minus block from going up that solution felt unprofessional and not obvious for the player
Type: I am neither a platformer or puzzle game player.
Completion time: 20~ minutes.
N.B.: anything I don't mention just worked, the entire rest of the tutorial made sense, the levels not listed in the level feedback section just made sense and worked I think as you intended. From your brain to mine. I did have to stop and think a couple of times to work out the order of operations.
+ Look & Feel
I like the magnet transition.
Initial wipe effect remains on left side of screen.
There are a number of assets that are at an incorrect depth compared to the action sprites, i.e. magnets go behind things it should be in front of.
The game has a unified look and feel with the exception of the Mario pipes, I think they are a solid shorthand for "stuff goes in here", but should probably be replaced eventually with something that suits the theme and the world. It does seem to a portal-esque testing space with industrial touches?
+ Levels
Tutorial
I could not immediately identify how to exit the tutorial level, I first went to the grated doorway and pressed Up to enter but nothing happened, then I tried jumping into the magnet mist while holding the magnet and swapped the polarity to see if that helped. Because it looks like a Mario tube, I assumed I had to get myself into it.
Zone Selector
I feel you should start in the zone selection area with the magnet already in hand.
The magnet cannot reach the blue magnet wave for the 06 pipe from the main floor of the zone selection stage, you have to go onto the step.
Level 3
I hopped over the drill bit because it looks dangerous.
Level 5
This puzzle was very enjoyable until the final step, when I felt frustrated I had been tricked by the final polarizing of the magnet, and had to repeat the level
Level 6
When the large blue magnet box was in the up position, I expected to be able to fit below it.
I did not expect the L door to stop the block as it seems to swing very freely and without weight, I expected it to be pushed out of the way so that solution did not occur to me for some time.
I thought the solution was to use the magnet to block the blue magnet box when it falls, as the magnet is taller than the height of the button in the pit.
When I grew frustrated I just started flipping the switch and mashing F and arrived at the solution by accident.
I accidentally pressed CTRL many times during level 6, I kept thinking it was the aim button.
I spent 30-40% of my playtime on level 06.
+ Controls/Characters
Magnet
I felt there was a bug in the game where the firing direction of the magnet remains in a previously fired direction despite the character changing facing and moving around, this was not the case.
Quick experimentation showed that pressing E to release the magnet without aiming releases it in the direction of the mouse pointer, not in the direction the character is travelling, this may be confusing to some users.
I had my mouse pointer outside the game area most of play.
If the cursor was represented with an in-game asset or indicated by an effect of some kind (like a very small pulse from the magnet towards the cursor) it might keep in the player's mind that the magnet is attracted to the cursor and not "thrown" by the moving character. The default windows cursor felt like it was "outside" the game.
There does appear to be momentum added to the magnet if it is released while moving (longer moving E throw than standing E throw), and the aiming animation has the character holding it over their back, so it does feel like the character is throwing it.
I would just like to fling the magnet, there never seemed to be a need for fine Scorched Earth aiming arc except to throw it up into the level selector tubes.
The magnet is effectively cheery, it is cute and I like it.
Are we not sure the magnet is the hero of the story? The magnet looks more marketable and seems more unique than the PC, plus the large eyes and emoji expression would do well on all sizes of merch whereas the black on green tends to shrink the PC's face.
It might be fun if the magnet has a different expression for positive and negative polarities, smiling, and grumpy? Means you can sell 2 plushes in a pack instead of one, make stickers for each magnet and then another with the two of them, etc.
I like the idea that the magnet is going on a journey and has asked the Wheelie TV for help.
I didn't realize the magnet had a joyful expression until testing at the end, does it only go off when thrown above a 45 degree angle? Or when aimed and thrown over 45?
Why is the magnet otherwise upset/unhappy when it is thrown? PC always remains smiling but the magnet does not seem to enjoy it.
Player Character (PC)
I am not sure there is a need for both a half-jump and the full jump, I had a few situations where I was jumping without pressing the space bar for long enough, resulting in the character jumping at a section of wall a couple of times instead of on top of it.
PC has a good boing to his full hop. The animation is nice.
The character stops and starts as expected, I am sure it could feel snappier but it is absolutely fine as is.
Hope this helps, Mr. Brown!
I wish the counter for the number of keys was more pixelated. It looks really out of place.
The overall experience is great ! But the aiming is really clunky especially on d-pad. It makes using the magnet much harder than it could be. The on-off switches have a bit of a weird hitbox and are a bit clunky to use. The UI doesn't make clear how long you need to press the restart button to restart. The levels being aligned make going from a place of the hub to another really slow and it would be interesting to see how a hub more similar to something like Kirby nightmare in dreamland would work for this game.
I suppose it won't be the case in later levels, but most of the puzzles in this demo felt like they solved themselves. The final level does a really good job however at subverting expectations. I feel like a lot of levels don't make full use of the different mechanics potential (once again, this will probably be fixed in the final game).
Just a little thing:
If you´re going to controller settings and trying to change a button but don´t actually have a controller around you can´t exit the menu anymore. I tried it at least to exit but couldn´t find a way to do that.
Keep up the great work ;)
Pressing ESC worked for me.
Of course this is a personal preference, but I think being able to move while throwing the magnet will allow for some solutions that require more timing and prevent the game from getting stale quicker. My favorite moment was in the last level where I threw the magnet into the pit in midair and it would be cool to have more of those. Great game otherwise though.
Feels nice, I personally find the magnet switch polarity cooldown a bit long, so I'd personally at least be able to shorten or remove it, minor issue, but it is what I felt
This was quite fun!
The character felt nice to control, the magnet felt nice to throw (although the half-second between holding E and having the character actually prep themself to throw took some getting used to), and the puzzles were well-designed. I have to say, though, being unable to move while aiming feels a bit off. I had more than one instance where I ended up in the wrong place and couldn't aim properly, and lack of movement made it so I had to throw the magnet at the floor and hope it didn't fall off an edge.
I don't know if this was your doing or if something broke, but I had zero sound during my entire playthrough. I checked my volume mixer and everything and still, total silence. (Using the Windows build, if that helps debug).
When the game started up, the window ended up so large that the bottom and right sides were cut off. I recognize this as something that might get fixed, though, if you add resolution settings to the system preferences menu, and playing in fullscreen had no issues.
The very last puzzle is funny. It took some thinking, trying several things, and gave me that "a-ha!" moment you wanted to achieve, for sure. It's just that I'm not even sure if my solution is the right one. I threw the magnet from the top level under the big minus block while it was being pulled up and next to the button that drops the weight, such that the magnet held up the block just above the button and stopped the button from being pressed. That's a clever solution, it's just that between the tiny gap I had to get the magnet in and the chance that the magnet could just end up on the button, forcing a restart, makes me think I found an alternate solution. Just felt that was worth pointing out.
I also think it might be a good idea to introduce the semisolid platforms before the first hub puzzle. I kinda got myself stuck trying to jump up to chase the magnet after it landed on not a slope, and was confused for a second.
Minus the potential sound issues, I luckily didn't run into any glitches. Then again, I wasn't trying anything super out-there, so I wasn't properly glitch-hunting. Still, though, intended player experience was super clean!
Overall, fun time! Can't wait to see where else this goes.
-- Epsilon
(Edit: forgot my "lack of movement while aiming" point)
Great demo, great puzzle, really enjoyed it!
To be fair, I felt the aiming / throwing mechanic a little jerky / not as smooth as I'd expect. An interesting option (maybe as an accessibility feature) would be to, instead of pushing the stick forward / toward where you aim, pulling it backward as you'd pull back a bow to aim before releasing the arrow.
Feedback:
1: There should be controls for aiming that don't require moving my right hand away from the arrow keys over to the mouse.
2: Levels should be numbered so as to make it easy to google hints for or just to discuss.
3: Clearer delineation between green power cable in OFF and ON mode. As it is, I can only be sure it's ON if I have an OFF cable to compare the brightness to or I follow the cable to the button or switch. Maybe an animation while ON?
4: 90 degree magnet gates shouldn't fill with color inward after turning, they should fill with color from top to bottom, as if gravity is pulling the magnetism into the lower one, to clearly communicate that it's the lower one that's active. Maybe even drain the color from the other pole in tandem.
5: Too much aliasing. Graphics seem not to be aligned to game resolution. 2 pixel wide lines sometimes appear 1 pixel wide, sometimes the inverse case, depending on where in the resolution grid they fall. Playing on 3440x1440 in windowed as that's how the game started, fullscreen seems bilinearly upscaled from windowed resolution so doesn't change the issue.
6: Pause menu options seem inconsistent. Sometimes require a double press. Playing at 100 hz
I'm mainly posting here because I have found 3 different solutions for the last level (SPOILERS ahead) and I am not sure they are all intended:
1) Throwing the magnet onto the switch (by switching polarity mid-air) and jumping above the pit before the [-] platform comes up
2) Throwing the magnet next to the bottom switch so that the blocks doesn't go all the way down and doesn't close the way to the key
3) Using the door to prevent the block from going back up (which I guess is the intended solution)
Also I wanted to say that these videos are fantastic, great work ! The game has definitively improved since last time and it feels really good to play now.
Oh, that's how you're supposed to do that! I did solution 2, which was hard because the level geometry kept bouncing the magnet onto the switch.
Having multiple solutions is pretty cool (even if they're not all intended)
I did the second solution, but it didn't feel like the right answer because of the weird physics of throwing the magnet under the block. I don't think I would have thought of the third solution.
Played, had a lot of fun! Very unique concept, and the puzzles are made very well! One thing I noticed is that the magnet free aim mode doesn't detect if there are any blocks in the way, such as in the final level. Aside from that, this was a blast!
Tried the last puzzle first and got stuck, then going back and playing them in order made feel like a genius. I really enjoyed it.
Enjoyed my time with the first few levels but I did get a bit stuck on the last level for a while
This doesn't feel like the right solution, but it did end up working
I didn't play through a lot of the demo because I found the controls a bit counter intuitive. I didn't realize that you had to aim the magnet with the mouse until I remembered seeing that in you video. I also found myself reaching towards the mouse every time I had to aim the back to the keyboard as I am right handed and used the arrow keys to move. Also I'm used to having the up arrow and w buttons in addition to the space bar preform jumps so it took a bit of getting used to using the space bar exclusively. The placement of the buttons for polarity switch and the magnet pick were easy to mix up. I often found myself switching polarity when I wanted to pick up the magnet. I know there was an options menu to remap the controls but I didn't feel like doing that for a game that made me frustrated within the first minute of the tutorial. Aside from the button mix up the robot felt very good to control and the premise seems fun. I can't wait to see this concept refined.
You can change jump to be whatever you want, can't you? Also why not just use WASD instead of arrow keys when you know you're gonna need the mouse?
Based on another player's comment, I don't think I used the intended solution to beat the last puzzle. I threw the magnet down in the pit preventing the large blue block from being able to push the button when dropped.
Might also help to have the levels numbered so you could refer to them without describing them.
Also, as others have said, for the finished product it would be great to avoid situations where you can easily get soft locked and forced to reset the level.
Galvanized Magnet Throwing Kid , GMTK, just a suggestion for the character/ game's name.
been watching your videos for years and you continue to inspire me. awesome work Mark and thanks for everything.
I had fun. Movement in this version feels very smooth and responsive and the jump has just the right arc. Personally, I tend to struggle with some puzzle games and I found all of these very straightforward. I hesitate to call the game easy because I still struggled with Puzzle #6. I put the level into an unsolvable state a few different ways and at one point fell into that pit with the button in it and then couldn't escape. Oh, and for some reason, pressing the left bumper reset the level one time, but then wouldn't do it again the next time I pressed it.
Last bits of feedback, the controller doesn't work in the options menu, I had to briefly switch back to my mouse, and the game froze briefly on the tutorial as I was interacting with that first magnet door.
With all that though, I think the game is making amazing progress, and I would love to play more of this in the future!
ohno.jpg
OMG! It even happened to me in the tutorial section.
In the first image you can change the magnet's polarity to make it go through the door again! In the second one though... yeah...
Congratulations on the project, it's a lot of fun, the controls are very responsive (I played using the controller) and the game is giving a lot of feedback, the art is also very beautiful, the puzzles were very well built and executed, just keep it that way, even though a demo, your game is already a success
Hello, Mark. Thank you for your YouTube series. As a fellow game developer, it's great to watch. I have some thoughts, but they are subjective, so please take this with a grain of salt:
While the gameplay is good, the character controller is well done (acceleration, deceleration, jump, etc), the mechanics are easy to comprehend, the level design is so-so (easy wins should be peppered throughout to give a sense of achievement and flow, i.e. introduce mechanic, next level is easy, then medium, then hard), the game itself is... not fun.
I think to myself, "why am I playing this?". When I play Untitled Magnet Game, I feel like I'm playing a game that's just created for the sake of making a game. The title could just be "Video Game". I don't see the joy in the creativity here. There is loads of creativity, just no joy in it. Perhaps this is done intentionally to just make an MVP, but I feel that joy still make it into an MVP. Joy can be communicated through:
Are you having fun making this game? Does it make you smile or chuckle to yourself when you make it? I ask this because it seems like a game someone was obligated to make. Some games are dark, brooding, and serious... but your game here feels like it should have whimsy. There is a whimsical aspect to the character and idea, but there's no whimsy or joy in the gameplay.
Even so, it's still pretty solid as a "video game", it's just not fun to play.
Keep up the good work and find that joy!
Mark: Hey guys here's a demo for my little puzzle game about a robot who throws a big magnet!
This guy: But where's the lore?
I mean doesn't need to be particularly big. Portal 1 and 2 have very simple stories (barely for the first) but it still makes the game engaging, funny, surprising, etc etc. There's an additional level of engagement. Doesn't have to be super deep you know?
Great stuff! The movement felt smooth and the mechanics are self-explanatory (also nice tutorial! Learn by doing).
Personally, I'm not a fan of 'softlocking' a level, even though there is a reset button it sometimes made me feel there is just a few set-in-stone steps I need to take. Which in essence is true of course... it just feels more like cracking a code (moon-logic in point-and-clicks) than solving a puzzle. Being able to trigger magnet gates without a magnet, or have a path around it, would probably help negate this feeling.
A small bug I found is that in the HUB world, the level reset sprite grows infinitely when holding Ctrl. Easy to fix with e.g. a Mathf.Clamp() on the Sprite transform.localScale, or block the action when in the HUB world.
Looking forward to play more of this!
It took me a couple minutes to realize that I needed to press the bumpers to get through the the options menu with a controller. Also when you go to aim the magnet your character slightly moves as you change angle of your throw which made me fall off of platforms a couple times. I like the single screen puzzles. The puzzles were really fun, the seventh one had me scratching my head for a few minutes.
I liked this a lot better than the initial demo. Solid puzzles, not too difficult, but still satisfying. I personally had no problem understanding mechanics so I could focus on the puzzle solving without being confused.
Just a couple small critiques. I often ended up in a position where I need to reset the level, which I don't think feels super good to be forced to do. Also, the hub - the walk to each level becomes a bit too long, especially later on.
I liked this demo! It feels like you've got a really solid grasp on what you want the game to be, and the puzzles were all excellent.
One minor complaint, regarding the restart system: by default, the control key restarts the level, though 99% of puzzle games (that I play, anyway) map this to the R key. I suppose this could be a problem if the player accidentally presses R, since it's so close to the other keys, but I think it wouldn't be such a big deal if you put up a "Are you sure you want to restart?" screen where the player could cancel the restart. Baba Is You did a similar thing with its restarts, and I think it worked really well.
Anyways, I think you're on the right track, and I'm legitimately excited for where you take this game next!
Overall I enjoyed the game. The game controls well even with a keyboard and mouse. I found the puzzles enjoyable and I was able to complete all the puzzles (aside from the last room) with little frustration. One suggestion I have is to make the hub more interesting. Maybe you could add some platforms or simple puzzles? Also for some reason I kept forgetting to grab the magnet in the hub so I have to go back and get it.
The movement in the V2.0 version of the game feels super good and is super fun to move around, even though you can only jump and change the magnet polarization. The only thing that I didn't like about the controllers is that when you aim to throw the magnet, you can't move around to perfecty aim the way you want, and having to keep pressing the same button to throwing feels odd to me, but maybe is my case because I don't usually play puzzle games. I would put the aim button just one button, the R1 for the PS controllers or the RB for the Xbox controllers.
Some jumps can be a bit tight for a puzzle game, if it were a platform game, it would be fine.
Ending the level just at getting the key, feels odd when you have to enter a room where the key is and it exits the moment you get the key and I feel like this game can benefit from the idea of getting the magnet to get out of the level, but that's up to the developer.
For now is fun overall
While holding the magnet it's possible to kind of get stuck on a ledge. Holding ctrl (reset) in the hub area is fun. And finally I felt the need for a "Exit" button or just "X" out of the options menu, because the first thing I did in the demo was get stuck in there lol.
Most of the levels were too easy, the one level I got that "ah ha" moment in was the last one
Feedback (Keyboard and mouse)
1. Menu
I think a separate back button for the controls and the pause menu is definitely needed. Having to press esc in the options menu unpauses the game automatically, which can get annoying.
In addition to that, in my opinion, a "back to main menu" button is missing from the pause button.
2. Controls
Not much to say here, felt great overall after remapping the jump to the W key.
However, when throwing using the mouse, I found it counterintuitive to drag forwards to throw. I think from playing games like Worms and Angry Birds it is engrained in my hands to pull back to throw forwards. While I don't think everyone agrees with me in this regard, an option to toggle between those two would be nice.
3. Gameplay
Once again, good overall, though I do have a few points to consider.
For one, in some levels (or level, I only noticed at the last level) it is annoying that the magnet spawns behind the character. As it took me a while to figure it out, having to run back after each reset made it quite annoying, with me often leaving the magnet behind and having to backtrack again.
Another thing I've noticed is that there is a slight cooldown when changing the polarity, meaning you can't rapidly change it. While it probably makes more sense balancing wise, it would be nice to be able to change the polarities more quickly, without having to wait for the animation to finish.
My last point is to maybe have a dedicated place to give feedback so that it isn't spread out between different platforms. Maybe even putting a link to where you can give feedback in the main menu so that it's easier to give feedback directly after playing.
I really like how the game is coming along. Keep up the good stuff!
Very, very good game. Good job, very enjoyable to play.
THIRD PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILER FOR ONE OF THE PUZZLES
The puzzle mechanics are very inventive, well-designed and fun to use, once you've figured them out. Because the mechanics are so novel you do have to fight your intuition quite a bit, which is pretty tiring if the game were longer.
The game was a lot of fun to play though. Once you're used to the rules of the game world it's just a joy to figure out the quite challenging puzzles! The introduction of new mechanics is also paced well, although the tutorial could be more thorough in showing the player how the character and the magnet interact with al the basic elements in the game world.
A particular example of this: The second puzzle is not very satisfying to solve as I did not know that the magnet falls through the thin platform instead of landing on top of it.
Definitely going to keep an eye on the development progress. Great work so far Mark! :)
Great demo, I enjoyed the puzzles and didn't have any gripes, but one very veeerrrryyyy minor thing I noticed is that in the hub, the magnet trajectory went behind the doors. Obviously, this is something super small, but, although it may have been intentional, I don't imagine it would, so just wanted to let you know. Other than that, again, great demo, I can't wait for more!
Movement feels loads better, and making switching polarity a main mechanic makes the game feel much more magnet-y.
My main criticism is that I really dislike the level automatically ending when you collect a key; it feels like it's taking control away from the player, and training myself to not assume I'll need to find a way out once I've got the key is difficult. It feels strange to knowingly throw the player character into a pit I know it can't get out of just to pick up a key.
There's also a few things that don't work the way I expect them to be looking at them/interacting with them. Throwing the magnet into the pipes is fairly clear what to do but feels disconnected from the rest of the mechanics; perhaps it would be better if pipes are only there to produce magnets and you could throw the magnet onto a switch to open doors or something? Using a mechanic that already exists in the puzzles. Then it felt strange to me that the magnet could fall through certain platforms that the player character can't; I assumed they were solid because the robot stood on them, so didn't think of trying to let the magnet fall through.
Then a few quality of life things could be better; a less tedious hub, puzzles that require less hard resetting, etc.
All in all a really good demo with nice puzzles and a massive step up in terms of it being fun to play.
I am trying to bind "Move Right" to "E" and it won't let me.
some of the jumps are a little to tight for a puzzle game. The movement fells alot better.
i feel the exits are not that obvius. I restarted the tutorial level multipule times until i figured out how i was suposed to leave the level.
I found some places that it was posible to get softlocked, i know there is a restart button but it feels kinda bad when you just figured it out just to have to do it all over again.
The hubworld is a good idea. it is kinda bad how you spawn in on the left and all the levels are more and more to the right.
A few minor things but all in all a really good demo.